A Mediterranean World of Separation or Connection? Recent Research on Late Medieval Cyprus

The history of the medieval Kingdom of Cyprus lies in the shadow of the crusades, and more particularly that of the crusader states. Conquered from its Byzantine ruler by Richard I of England during the Third Crusade and sold to the former King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, the island became an offshore appendage to the crusader states of the Holy Land. It was settled by a Latin, Catholic elite of nobility, clergy and burgesses of largely French ancestry, forming a small dominant minority atop a largely Greek Orthodox population who were brought to a nominal acknowledgement of papal supremacy. Among the variegated colonies and polities established by medieval Latin Christians in the East, Cyprus is marked out by its longevity as a Catholic possession, enduring as an independent kingdom under the Lusignans until the late fifteenth century, and spending another century in the hands of Venice before falling to the Ottomans in 1571. Thus it crosses otherwise stark chronological divides, an offshoot of the original crusader states which long survived their demise and continued through successive reconfigurations of the world of the Latins in the East. It offers a unique window on wider processes of long-term regional development by showing the impact of such processes on a single enduring society and regime

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